St. Vincent to play Memorial

Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is a pop musician in the least conventional sense of the word. Fusing noisy, thrashing guitars with a voice fit for a chamber choir, Clark’s aesthetic isn’t easily imitated. The critical darling talked to Assistant Diversions Editor Linnie Greene about pop culture, growing up in Dallas and everything in between on the eve of her show tonight at Memorial Hall.

Diversions: You’ve done several collaborations. Do you ever find it difficult to jell your own style with someone else’s?

Annie Clark: What I’ve found in the collaborations that I’ve done is just that you feel a lot less pressure and a lot less ego involved in collaboration. You kind of just get excited about the prospect that the collaboration will be whatever it is. So like combining your DNA with someone else’s, the baby will be whatever it will be. You don’t have tons of control, but you put your best foot forward. The point of it is to do something that isn’t exactly what you would’ve thought to do.

Dive: Your first record was named after an episode of “Arrested Development.” Do you feel like pop culture plays a major role in your work?

AC: Well, I feel like in press and with the Marry Me record being named after “Arrested Development,” I maybe talk a little too much about “Arrested Development.”

I’ve been so pop culture entrenched since I was a kid. I mean, I’m a kid from the ’80s. I swear I’m not making excuses for low-brow TV, but there’s a show called the “Millionaire Matchmaker.” And I started watching it and I developed like a whole lot of sympathy and empathy for this woman.

I happened upon it by accident, on a plane, and then I sought it out. I think her politics are really screwy, really pre-Betty Friedan, the feminist politics are really nut-bars.

Dive: How did you come up with the name St. Vincent? Why did you adopt an alias?

AC: Well, St. Vincent’s a family name. It’s the name of my great-great-grandfather. I wanted to choose a stage name because it allowed me more creative flexibility to do whatever and have St. Vincent be any incarnation of me, plus any number of musicians and sort of any lineup, so that’s the reason. I just think psychically, it was a way to create more creative space.

Dive: I saw your satirical clip on Pitchfork.tv where you’re performing in a fake bookstore called “Women and Women First.” Why do you think so many women in particular relate to your music?

AC: I think I’ve just gotten a little bit of distance from the Actor record. I think a lot of it deals with repression in many forms, and I’m from the South. I’m from Texas, and there’s tremendous pressure on women to always be agreeable — oftentimes at the expense of our own feelings, our own dignity or whatever.

I think there’s pressure on women to be polite and to be agreeable, sometimes to our own detriment. And I think the Actor record kind of deals a lot with that.

Dive: When did you start writing music?

AC: I’ve been playing music since I was about — I started playing guitar when I was 12 and piano a little bit before that.

My honest-to-God earliest influences were like, I wanted to be Donald Fagen or Eddie Vedder when I was ten. That’s what music meant to me, like Steely Dan and Pearl Jam. From like 10 to 12 or 13.

Dive: Were most girls your age into ’90s rock, as opposed to pop, or did it set you apart?

AC: I think that different things are commodified at different times. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, you have all this pop music, like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and En Vogue starting to talk about social issues like AIDS and racism and gay rights, and all these things are sort of percolating.

So you have this pop music that’s really informed by that. Where was I going with this? And, oh, but so then of course you have Riot Grrrl happening. You have grunge, this ’90s aesthetic starting to take hold. And then you get a sort of out-of-touch boardroom commodification of that with everybody from 1993 to 1999 trying to sing like Eddie Vedder or Nirvana, this kind of commodified Spice Girls version of feminism or whatever. It seems like an awkward boardroom commodification. Like, “The kids are listening to this; let’s try and capitalize on that for awhile.”

Dive: Have you ever spent any time in Chapel Hill? Are you looking forward to playing here?

AC: I’ve spent a lot of time in Chapel Hill. Daniel Hart, my violinist and good friend, lived in Chapel Hill for like six years. We used to do little tours around the East Coast in his minivan. Weaver Street Market’s great! I’ve spent a lot of time in Chapel Hill. I’m less familiar with Raleigh and Durham, but I like it. I like it very much.

Carrburrito’s, that’s what’s up — it’s super good.



Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.